Post by Susan Biro, Acting Manager of Online Learning, DoIT
In a survey of more than 900 students from fall 2020 who completed courses that utilized no-cost or low-cost Open Educational Resources (OER), UMBC students said they appreciated saving money on instructional materials and would recommend an OER course to others.
Nearly 90% of students said the quality of the OER course materials was of similar or higher quality than non-OER course materials. In the surveyed courses, faculty replaced traditional print textbooks with OERs and provided supplemental digital homework tools. Forty-five percent of students who completed the survey said they would be fairly likely or very likely to enroll in an OER course again, while 53% said they would recommend an OER course to others.
Instructors Sarah Bass (CHEM 101), Tara Carpenter (CHEM 102), and Maria Manni (SPAN 101/103) replaced traditional print textbooks with OERs and provided supplemental digital homework tools.
Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium (digital or otherwise) that are released under an open license that permits no-cost or low-cost access, use, adaptation, or redistribution (UNESCO, 2002). OER can include textbooks, syllabi, supplementary materials, quizzes, assessment rubrics, homework, or labs.
About 60 comments were provided about students' experience with OERs. The majority of written feedback focused on positive engagement with the digital resources and homework tools that supported students' ability to practice problems or equations and learn vocabulary.
Students offered additional comments about how they would use money saved from OER toward paying tuition or other fees (64%), covering personal expenses (55%), buying textbooks or materials for other classes (46%), or taking an additional course (19%). Some expressed challenges with the materials themselves, such as relevance to course content, impact on learning style, or ability to annotate online content vs. printed material.
Additional observations:
A total of 551 students completed the survey from the 917 invited to participate. The survey was distributed to students using Blackboard's native Enterprise Survey tool.
Explore how you can adopt OERs for your course:
Attend upcoming virtual events:
Contact OER co-chairs Erin Durham (edurham@umbc.edu) or Susan Biro (sbiro@umbc.edu) for more information on OER at UMBC.
]]>Last month, we kicked off our GO Chat series for 2021 with a dive into all-things-open, as in Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Pedagogy, and Open Science.
We started with a brief discussion about several recent articles that caught our attention:
Helping us understand this journey about all-things-open was UMBC alumni Dr. Karen Cangialosi, a Professor of Biology and Open Education Faculty Fellow at Keene State College (KSC) in Keene, New Hampshire.
Although she regularly incorporates open pedagogy in all her courses, Karen explains her journey started with an episode of the podcast, The Future Trends Forum by Bryan Alexander. During the episode featuring Gardner Cambell (2016), Karen recalled, "I'm a biology professor who used mostly traditional materials, but I did a complete 180 when it came to open education after listening to Gardner Campbell."
A proponent of Open Educational Resources (OER), Karen says OERs are an important gateway to open education in terms of people, practices, and content. Open pedagogy is about access, agency, and community. Karen describes a learning environment where her students can work with her to create content or learning outcomes, write an attendance policy, design self assessments, or determine how they will be graded.
While students can be unsure, or even resistant to this approach, Karen suggests that since most students will not know what this process can be about she still offers more traditional methods, content, or assessments. And what often ends up happening in those instances is that a few weeks after watching classmates create and share content, students will come to her and ask, "Can I change? I want to do what they're doing instead of this 25-page paper I said I'd write."
When it comes to students sharing content, Karen never requires them to create openly licensed work; however, she provides examples and opportunities that make it possible. For example, her BIO 318 students created a textbook -- A Student's Guide to Tropical Marine Biology that is utilized by other students across the open education community.
Karen acknowledges open education has been building slowly and she frequently guides colleagues to start with "your desire as a professor and what you want students to do and learn in your course." As higher education is changing dramatically now due to COVID-19, Karen sees faculty ideally positioned to shape those conversations and changes. Read more about Karen at her website: https://karencang.net/
In a survey of more than 900 students from fall 2020 who completed courses that utilized no-cost or low-cost Open Educational Resources (OER), UMBC students said they appreciated saving money on instructional materials and would recommend an OER course to others.
Nearly 90% of students said the quality of the OER course materials was of similar or higher quality than non-OER course materials. In the surveyed courses, faculty replaced traditional print textbooks with OERs and provided supplemental digital homework tools. Forty-five percent of students who completed the survey said they would be fairly likely or very likely to enroll in an OER course again, while 53% said they would recommend an OER course to others.
Instructors Sarah Bass (CHEM 101), Tara Carpenter (CHEM 102), and Maria Manni (SPAN 101/103) replaced traditional print textbooks with OERs and provided supplemental digital homework tools.
Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium (digital or otherwise) that are released under an open license that permits no-cost or low-cost access, use, adaptation, or redistribution (UNESCO, 2002). OER can include textbooks, syllabi, supplementary materials, quizzes, assessment rubrics, homework, or labs.
About 60 comments were provided about students’ experience with OERs. The majority of written feedback focused on positive engagement with the digital resources and homework tools that supported students’ ability to practice problems or equations and learn vocabulary.
Students offered additional comments about how they would use money saved from OER toward paying tuition or other fees (64%), covering personal expenses (55%), buying textbooks or materials for other classes (46%), or taking an additional course (19%). Some expressed challenges with the materials themselves, such as relevance to course content, impact on learning style, or ability to annotate online content vs. printed material.
Additional observations:
A total of 551 students completed the survey from the 917 invited to participate. The survey was distributed to students using Blackboard’s native Enterprise Survey tool.
Explore how you can adopt OERs for your course:
Attend upcoming virtual events:
Contact OER co-chairs Erin Durham (edurham@umbc.edu) or Susan Biro (sbiro@umbc.edu) for more information on OER at UMBC.
]]>With the rising cost of textbooks, the use of open educational resources (OER) can significantly increase student learning and success. This workshop will introduce UMBC faculty to OER repositories of peer-reviewed course materials and simple strategies for incorporating them into your classes. Whether you have explored the open access movement before or are just starting out, this interactive workshop gives you practical tools and experience champion OER in the classroom with ease.
Success Accelerator Learning Communities for Maryland Faculty Using Lumen OHM & Waymaker
Wednesday, December 9, 2020 at 3:00-3:45 pm ET
Have you considered adopting Lumen Waymaker or OHM for one of your courses but been concerned about how much support you’ll have in making the transition? Are you interested in connecting and sharing ideas with faculty from other institutions who use Lumen Waymaker and OHM? Would you like to explore how to use these courseware tools more fully to engage students and support their success?
The Lumen Circles Success Accelerator program may be a good fit for you. Join this webinar for a guided tour of Success Accelerator’s virtual communities of practice. Hear from a panel of Maryland faculty members about how these peer-based learning circles expand their understanding of evidence-based teaching practices and strengthen student success using Lumen courseware.
This professional development program is available at no cost to Maryland faculty, offered with support from the Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T) Initiative and USM OnTrack.
Click here to register for this informational webinar. If you're interested but cannot attend, please register so we can send you the recording afterwards.
Click here to apply for the Lumen Circles Success Accelerator program.
If you have specific questions, you are always welcome to email us at most@usmd.edu.
Good luck with the end of your semester and I do hope you’ll find time to rest and regenerate over the semester break.